Lisa DeJong, The Plain DealerAhuja Medical Center in Beachwood is one of eight emergency rooms in the University Hospitals system that is offering patients the choice to schedule an estimated treatment time with the InQuick software system by a Nashville-based company. This allows patients with non-life-threatening conditions to wait at home instead of in the ER.

CLEVELAND, Ohio --

Patients can now make an appointment online for eight University Hospitals emergency rooms and wait their turn in the comfort of their home.

The service started a few weeks ago and is for people with non-life-threatening conditions, said Richard Hanson, president of UH community hospitals and ambulatory network. Those with life-threatening emergencies should call 911 or immediately head to a hospital.

Patients waiting at home willget email and automated phone status updates from the InQuicker online system in case of delays, Hanson said, and generally the wait should be only about 15 minutes once they arrive at the emergency room.

"The intent of this project is not to reduce waiting time, but to give patients the choice of waiting in line at home," he said.

The software estimates available treatment times based on how many patients are in need of care; online users are subject to the same triage and queuing as others in the ER.

UH is the only hospital system in Ohio with the online appointment service, InQuicker company spokesman Chris Song said. Three Dayton-area hospitals offered the system on a trial basis earlier this year. Those medical centers are no longer using the service but are in talks with the company about renewing the licensing agreement, Song said.

While the online service is only being offered in community medical centers and one urgent care center right now, it should be "rolled out" at UH Case Medical Center's University Circle emergency department by the end of the year, Hanson said.

The system is online at uhhospitals.org/inquicker. A prompt allows the user to click on one of the emergency room locations. The user then selects a treatment time and fills out a form with their name, phone number and symptoms.

The system sends an alert to the ER when a time is set by an online user and a nurse reviews the person's symptoms. InQuicker is designed to detect key words that may indicate if the person's condition is life-threatening and will not allow the appointment to be scheduled, Song said. InQuicker will instead tell the person to call 911. The ER nurse may follow-up with a call as well.

Song said InQuicker was founded in 2006 and began to grow in earnest in 2010. At that time, the Nashville company had 28 partners. Today, there are 158 emergency rooms or urgent care centers in 21 states using the InQuicker system, Song said. About 80 percent of the people using the service nationwide wait less than 15 minutes before being seen by a doctor or nurse, he said.

Hanson said UH considered the system at the suggestion of some emergency room physicians. He would not reveal how much InQuicker cost UH, but said that the service is free to patients.

Song emphasized that the service is for people who are sure that they can wait at home safely with no health risk. Examples of non-threatening ailments include: urinary track infection, fever, migraine headache, sprained ankle, back pain.

UH medical center emergency rooms offering the online ER scheduling service include: Bedford, Conneaut, Geauga, Geneva, Richmond, Twinsburg, Ahuja in Beachwood and St. John in West Lake (a joint venture of UH and Sisters of Charity Health System). The online system also can be used for the urgent care center in Twinsburg.

Though other area hospitals do not have similar online services, Lake Health two years ago began posting ER wait times on Twitter for its two medical centers, TriPoint and Lake West.